Cosmic Tsunamis Can Bring Dead Galaxies Back To Life – 27 April 2015

Interstellar tsunamis can act as a defibrillator for “red and dead” galaxies, astronomers have discovered. When neighboring clusters of galaxies merge it causes a shock wave and new generations of stars emerge in resurrected cosmic systems.

Comatose galaxies, that stopped star formations in the distant past but still interact with their cluster neighbors, have a chance to revive, show papers by a team of astronomers, led by Andra Stroe of Leiden Observatory and David Sobral of Leiden and the University of Lisbon. They were recently published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.